Zotero : A Bibliographic Manager in Your Browser

Zotero is a free Firefox extension that lets you gather citations from a variety of sources, organize and annotate them, and print or export bibliographies in a variety of formats.

It knows how to recognize and extract bibliographic information from many resources, including the NOBLE library catalog, our EBSCO databases, and many other sites including Amazon and the New York Times. When you are on a page with information about a single book, CD, movie, etc., you will see a small icon for that format in the location bar. Click on it, and you’ll save the citation to your Zotero library. If you are on a search results page with a list of books, CDs, etc., you will see a folder in the location bar. Click on this, and you can select which titles to add to your bibliography.
Once you have items saved, you can click on the Zotero logo at the bottom of your browser to open your library. There are three panels in the Zotero citation manager display: the list of folders if you have more than one is in the left panel, the list of citations in the current folder is in the middle panel, and the selected citation is in the right. There are tabs that let you add notes, screenshots or links to any item.

You can also add citations into the database by hand, and you can edit and organize your bibliography even when you are offline. Your library is stored in your browser, but you can make it portable by using a copy of Firefox on a USB device like a jumpdrive.

There’s much more you can do with this tool, and there are more options including an online version on the way.

Zotero is developed by the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University as an open source tool for students and scholars. This Firefox extension comes bundled in the new Campus Edition of Firefox, but you can also add it to any current Firefox browser.

Zotero Links

Zotero — This is the official website, and includes documentation and discussion forums.